REACTIONS BY NATIVE AMERICAN PARENTS TO CHILD …

REACTIONS BY NATIVE AMERICAN PARENTS TO CHILD PROTECTION

AGENCIES: CULTURAL AND COMMUNITY FACTORS

Charles Horejsi, Bonnie Heavy Runner Craig, and Joe Pablo*

The oppression suffered by Native Americans has so undermined their culture and ability to

parent that child abuse and neglect are frequent problems. Yet the history of oppression

often seriously damages the capacity of many Native American parents to accept help from

child protective service agencies and staff members. This article explains the particular

characteristics and behaviors of some Native American parents, and closes with a

summarized guide to understanding these parents and to appropriate behavior on the part of

social workers.

Certain community and cultural factors affect how Native American parents react to child

protection investigations and interventions concerning child abuse and neglect. Native

American parents may behave in ways that cause practitioners to view them as

uncooperative, unmotivated, resistant, or hard-to-reach. This is not to suggest that a high

proportion of Native American parents abuse or neglect their children, or that those that do

are always resistant to or uncooperative with child protection services (CPS). Rather, this

article focuses on the small percentage of Native American parents who react to CPS with

extreme aggressiveness, passivity, or avoidance, and on the factors that may account for their

behaviors. Unfortunately, such behaviors by a parent may precipitate court action even in

cases where the CPS worker would prefer to avoid court involvement.

In those cases where the abused or neglected child is removed and placed in foster care, both

tribal and state agency CPS practitioners observe that it is not uncommon for the parents to

leave their home area, avoid further contact with the agency, and seemingly abandon their

child. These actions by a parent depart radically from traditional tribal family values that

assign much importance to children.

How can we explain these reactions? Why do Native American parents so often behave in

ways that are certain to get them into deeper trouble with authorities and the court? Why do

parents so easily give up and run away? Obviously, there is no single or complete

explanation. Many interrelated personality and situational factors might give rise to this

behavior. Alcohol or drug abuse are of critical importance in most cases. In addition, the

authors believe that cultural and community dynamics are equally significant.

CPS as a Threat to the Parent

When confronted with a CPS investigation, abusing or neglectful parents, regardless of

cultural background, typically feel that the intervention is unfair and unjustified, and often

react with anger and sometimes aggression. Others react with extreme fear and become

psychologically immobilized and passive. Still others try to flee. A skilled CPS social worker

can work through these reactions in most cases and obtain from the parent, at a minimum, a

beginning level of cooperation so that steps can be taken to reduce risk to the child. Some

parents, however, remain intensely hostile, resistant, and uncooperative.

Working with an angry and uncooperative parent becomes even more complex when the

parent is a member of a cultural minority or an ethnic group having values, beliefs, and

social norms significantly different than those of the CPS worker. Cross-cultural interaction

increases the potential for misunderstanding and misinterpretation by both the worker and

the parent.

In a CPS investigation, a powerful governmental agency has, in effect, pointed its finger at

the parent and accused him or her of being bad or irresponsible; although these words are

never spoken, that is what the parent hears. Whenever a person is threatened and frightened,

the primitive fight-or-flight response is activated. Thus, the parent who feels threatened is

motivated to either attack the CPS worker/agency or to escape by fleeing. A number of

cultural, historical, and community factors magnify this threat for the Native American

parent. Goodtracks [1973: 32], for example, explains that when confronted, the Native

American typically withdraws from the interaction but when pushed beyond endurance, he

may lose self-control and drive the aggressor away with verbal or physical force.

The Need for Understanding

The CPS worker��s capacity for empathy is vital for engaging and working with these parents

effectively. This ability to accurately tune in to the life experiences and feelings of other

persons, to step into their shoes and to see things and feel life as they do, is difficult but

necessary to sense the parent��s underlying feelings and the meaning he or she attaches to

being forced into a relationship with the agency. With empathy, the worker can accurately

address the parent��s fears, anger, and other feelings and adapt his or her own approach to

winning the parent��s cooperation.

CPS workers must be sensitive to the wide variety of personal, social to the wide variety of

personal, social, and economic elements that contribute to the problem of child abuse or

neglect by any parent. When the parent is Native American, the worker must, in addition,

be alert not only to cultural differences but also to the events of remembered history that

have shaped the attitudes of native people toward child welfare agencies, social workers, and

other professionals. Lack of money, health problems, chemical dependency, discrimination,

psychological problems, and inadequate parenting skills intensify enormously the

complexities of parenting. Below, we briefly describe some of the social problems and

cultural and community factors that affect all Native American parents and may directly or

indirectly influence how an individual parent responds to a CPS worker and agency.

Poverty

When compared to other minority groups in the United States, Native Americans are

among the poorest of the poor [Levitan 1990]. Poverty places families under great stress and

shapes their behavior, attitudes, and expectations, forcing parents to devote an inordinate

amount of time and energy to tasks of day-to-day survival. A life of grinding poverty often

gives rise to feelings of hopelessness and a belief that one is helpless to control or influence

one��s life and its circumstances. Sometimes poverty generates feelings of hostility toward

those in positions of authority and those who are better off economically. These attitudes

and beliefs are culturally passed from one generation to another. When parents, who already

feel helpless, are confronted by a CPS agency, they may feel completely overwhelmed and

the intensity of that feeling may lead to extreme and inappropriate behavior.

Effects of Racism and Discrimination

Most Native Americans encounter racism and discrimination daily. Sometimes it is as subtle

as a disapproving look from a store clerk; sometimes it is as open as being refused rental

housing or a job. Anti-discrimination laws exist but they protect only those persons willing

and assertive enough to report an offense and to make an issue out of an act of

discrimination.

Typically, Native American children begin to experience racism and discrimination early in

life. Upon entering elementary school, they learn that the customs and values of their tribal

community are not only different, but often opposite to those of the dominant society. All

too often, the school experience teaches Native American children that the dominant society

does not understand and does not value their culture and traditions; and that those in the

dominant society feel superior to those who are culturally different.

On the playground the Native American child may be called drunken Indian or wagon

burner. Sooner or later the child hears that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Some

Native American children may incorporate these expressions of bigotry into their selfconcept, giving rise to feelings of inferiority. To escape this pain, the children may withdraw

or act out. They may, for example, avoid school, where they encounter beliefs of the

dominant society [Redhorse 1982]. They may also develop self-defeating or antisocial

behaviors such as depression, suicidal tendencies, glue sniffing, alcohol abuse, violence,

promiscuity, and other problems that are frequently rooted in low self-esteem [Three

Feathers Associates 1987]. A study by Finley [1989], for example, found that 29% of Native

American girls and 100% of Native American boys were heavy drinkers by the ninth grade.

Personal experiences with racism and discrimination can give rise to fear and distrust of

persons from the dominant culture and of persons representing social service agencies

operated by non-Native American governments. A fear or suspicion of agencies will, of

course, affect how a parent responds to a CPS agency and its workers.

Early Death, Endless Grieving

Given the high rate of chronic diseases (e.g., diabetes, alcoholism, heart disease, and liver

disease), suicide, and accidents among Native American people, their life expectancy of 44

years is relatively short when compared to that of the United States population as a whole

[Man Keung Ho 1987: 70]. Comparatively speaking, Native American people die at a young

age: more than one-third of all deaths are of people under age 45, three times the rate of the

general population [Campbell 1989]. For Native Americans, such grim statistics are

experienced as a seemingly endless stream of funerals and an unending sense of loss and

grief.

Within tribal communities, the emotional impact of death is felt more intensely because so

many in the community are bonded or attached to each other by blood, marriage, or longtime friendship. Frequent losses can exhaust one��s coping capacity. As one Blackfeet woman

expressed it:It seems as if another death or another tragedy always comes along before you

have had time to grieve the last one.

A personal history of frequent loss and incomplete grieving can affect how some parents

respond to a CPS worker who has the power to place their child in foster care and thereby

inflict still another loss. Face with a threat that carries the same emotional impact as death,

they may react in an apparently irrational manner, such as attacking the worker, or, on the

other extreme, running away or perhaps becoming completely passive.

The Boarding School Legacy

Beginning in the late 1800s, U.S. government policy toward Native American people

emphasized forced assimilation into the world of the white man. The Indian boarding

school was designed to remove children from the influence of their parents and Tribe and

create a new social environment where they could be civilized.

Discipline in these schools was harsh and the daily routine rigid. Children were required to

speak only English and were punished for using their native language. Their hair, an

important cultural symbol, was cut short. Uniforms replaced individually created and

uniquely decorated native clothes. Visits home were few and far between. Clearly, the

boarding school was an effort to destroy cultural identity; unfortunately, it was quite

successful. Many who attended these schools lost touch with their tribal language, religious

beliefs, customs, and social norms.

The boarding school experience has had a far-reaching effect on Native American culture

and family structure. Those people who spent much of their childhood in boarding schools

were deprived of an opportunity to experience family life, and many reached their

adulthood with no clear concept of parenting behavior and family functioning. The

boarding school effectively destroyed the intergenerational transmission of family and

parenting knowledge and behaviors. Now, one or more generations after the boarding school

era, many Native Americans are ill-prepared for the parent role.

The boarding schools not only destroyed or distorted the intergenerational (cultural)

transmission of family and parenting knowledge and behavior, but they also introduced new

and dysfunctional behaviors, such as the use of severe punishment in child rearing. Parents

who had as children been spanked and hit while attending boarding school responded

similarly to their own children. Before the boarding school era, the use of physical discipline

was uncommon in most Tribes.

Even worse, a report published by the National Resource Center on Child Sexual Abuse

[1990] cites evidence that many Native American children were sexually abused while

attending boarding schools. The introduction of child sexual abuse into tribal communities,

where it had not existed before, is especially troublesome: Native American people tend not

to talk openly about sex because sexual matters are highly private matters. This cultural

taboo prevents the sexually abused child from reporting the offense. For the same reason,

adults troubled by childhood sexual abuse avoid using professional services to cope with

unresolved issues. When cases of child sexual abuse are disclosed, the tribal community is

thrown into conflict and is often unable or unwilling to deal with the problem.

The boarding schools also disrupted the cultural transmission of parent-child attachment

behaviors, which has created personal and family problems that have persisted over as many

as three generations. As a sad aftereffect of these disruptions, we now see many Native

America children being raised by biological parents with few parenting skills; some children

are being raised by grandparents who lack real attachment to their own children, the parents

of their grandchildren. The lack of parenting skills and the problems in attachment place

children at risk of abuse or neglect. Unless these problems are dealt with, each new

generation is at risk of repeating this dysfunction cycle.

When parents lack parenting skills and have no clear concept of the parent role, they are

easily frustrated by normal parental responsibilities and especially by a difficult or specialneeds child. The Native American parents who come into contact with a CPS agency

usually need help in learning how to be parents. The most effective parent training programs

are those that blend principles derived from modern child development with the spirituality,

customs, traditions, and other cultural ways of their Tribe [Cross 1986]. Culturally oriented

programs of parent education help parents rediscover tradition-based family patterns that

were obscured and suppressed by boarding schools and one or more generations of family

dysfunction.

Unfortunately, in some cases the parents are so dysfunctional that these programs have little

effect. There may be no alternative to foster care and possibly court action to create an

opportunity, usually through guardianship, for the child to attach to another family. It

should be noted that most tribal courts are extremely reluctant to terminate parental rights

because it is culturally offensive. As one tribal attorney explained, We don't even use the "T"

word.

Foster Care

According to Cross [1987], Native American languages did not contain words that translate

into our contemporary concept of foster care. Historically, the extended family and the clan

system provided whatever substitute family care might be needed. As part of its assimilation

policy, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was responsible directly, or indirectly through

church-related programs, for placing large numbers of Native American children in nonNative foster homes and adoptive homes. It was this extraordinarily high rate of out-ofhome placements and cultural dislocation that eventually resulted in passage of Public Law

95-608, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.

Even today, many Native American people have bitter feelings toward foster care and the

agencies and staff members associated with foster care. Many of today��s Native American

parents have parents or grandparents who were snatched from the reservation and placed in

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download